All items listed and reviewed are available for purchase directly from Brickbat Books, although quantities are limited. Brickbat Books is located at 709 South Fourth Street, in the heart of Fabric Row, in Philadelphia.

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Event: NYHC: New York Hardcore 1980-1989 by Tony Rettman

Saturday December 13 7-9 PM.Bazillion Points has just published THEE most
comprehensive tome on New York Hardcore ever. 450 pages jam-packed.
Come out and buy one. Author Tony Rettman will be around to chat and
sign em along with legendary artist Sean Taggart (Agnostic Front, Crumbsuckers, plenty of others).

Known for its glamorous 1970s punk rock scene, New
York City matched the grim urban reality of the 1980s with a rawer
musical uprising: New York hardcore. As bands of misfits from across the
region gravitated to the forgotten frontier of Manhattan’s Lower East
Side. With a a backdrop of despair, bands like Agnostic Front, Cro-Mags,
Murphy’s Law, and Youth of Today confronted their reality with
relentlessly energetic gigs at CBGB, A7, and the numerous squats in the
area.

Tony Rettman’s ambitious oral history captures ten
years of struggle, including the scene’s regional rivalries with D.C.
and Boston, the birth of moshing, the clash and coming to terms of
hardcore and heavy metal, the straightedge movement, and the unlikely
influence of Krishna consciousness.

With a foreword by Freddy
Cricien of Madball, who made his stage debut with Agnostic Front at age
7, NYHC slams the sidewalk with savage tales of larger-than-life
characters and unlikely feats of willpower. The gripping and sometimes
hilarious narrative is woven together like the fabric of New York itself
from over 100 original interviews with members of Absolution, Adrenalin
O.D., Agnostic Front, Antidote, Bad Brains, Bloodclot, Bold, Born
Against, Breakdown, Cause for Alarm, Citizens Arrest, Cro-Mags,
Crumbsuckers, Death Before Dishonor, Even Worse, False Prophets, Gorilla
Biscuits, H20, Heart Attack, Inhuman, Into Another, Irate, Judge,
Kraut, Leeway, Life’s Blood, Major Conflict, Murphy’s Law, Nausea,
Nihilistics, Nuclear Assault, Numskulls, Outburst, Pro-Pain, Quicksand,
Raw Deal, Reagan Youth, Rorschach, S.O.D., Sacrilege, Savage Circle,
Sheer Terror, Shelter, Shok, Sick of it All, Side by Side, Skinhead
Youth, Straight Ahead, the Abused, the Cryptcrashers, the Mad, the
Misfits, the Misguided, the Mob, the Psychos, the Ritz, the Stimulators,
the Undead, Token Entry, Underdog, Urban Waste, Virus, Warzone, Youth
of Today, and many, many more.